Description: For a long time the primary focus of private LTC insurance companies has been to educate the public about the need for private LTC insurance and to make the product more acceptable to a wider population. To this end there have been numerous changes to the product design to make this product more acceptable to general population. However, one of the things that may have been overlooked in those product design changes is the need for alignment of policyholder and insurance company’s interests, which is to make coverage more affordable and to reduce adverse selection. Incentivizing good behavior from policyholders can not only make LTC insurance policies less expensive but also help policyholders make better health choices, which can help them stay healthy for a longer time. These incentives may also reduce some of the inherent risks in a long term care policy and may help in increasing the sales of private LTC insurance.

Description: Growing in popularity, coverage of Independent Provider services under long-term care insurance plans providing home health care benefits presents unique challenges—from product design to claims practices.

Description: The current design of group Long-Term Care LTC products does not optimally serve employers and employees, which is limiting growth in the employer market. Current employer LTC products fail to deliver in one very important way: too few employees participate in the coverage.

Description: Proposes setting premiums such that inflation and age could change the premium over time, rather than prefunding. The value may be to change the approach to pricing LTC and improve the risk.

Description: The author discusses health care practices in Japan and how the US could successfully adopt some of them.

Description: Second article in a series on how to use predictive analytics to improve the development of long-term care projection assumptions.

Description: Approaches to filing, approving and implementing LTC rate increases impact policyholder behavior regarding retaining/modifying their coverage.